CD Baby extends its reach.

Byline: Serena Markstrom The Register-Guard

CD Baby, an online music seller based in Portland, announced last week a new distribution deal that will allow consumers to buy independent music from CD Baby's catalog at more than 2,400 retail outlets around the country.

That means consumers can walk into a retail giant such as Borders and be able to order from artists who sell online through CD Baby. House of Records and CD World in Eugene and Record Garden in Springfield are among a few locally owned businesses that could benefit from the deal.

CD Baby only accepts albums directly from musicians, not from manufacturers or distributors. The employees there listen to each CD to provide more service to customers, such as making recommendations.

CD Baby gets a cut of each sale. That will still be true for albums ordered at retailers but sold through CD Baby; however, retailers can mark up the prices to get their profit.

Local independent bands such as the Sugar Beets, Yeltsin, Eleven Eyes and the Raventones have wares available on CD Baby. Buyers also can search the site by state and within the state by genre.

In Oregon, for example, the rock genre offers the most titles, with more than 1,000. Folk is second with almost 600. Within folk there are subcategories, such as "Angry" and "like Joni" or "like Ani."

Eugene's own William Chico Schwall's CD "Driving by Moonlight" falls into the angry folk category.

The new contract is a partnership with Super D, one of the nation's largest music wholesalers. Super D had a catalog of more than 415,000 albums before the CD Baby deal, according to a news release.

Now, the Super D catalog will swell to more than 545,000 albums. The deal will make it easier for smaller CD stores to order independent music, because titles will be consolidated to one wholesaler.

CD Baby has made similar deals with Apple's iTunes, Yahoo Music, Rhapsody, Napster and other digital retailers.

CDbaby.com defines independent as "not having sold one's life, career and creative works over to a corporation."

Because CD Baby works directly with musicians, not record labels, most of CD Baby's 130,000-plus artists were not available previously to retail outlets, the news release says. The Web site says the company has sold more than 2.36 million CDs online and paid out more than $27 million to artists.

Started by Derek Sivers as a hobby while selling his own CD online in 1997, the site grown through word-of-mouth to be the largest seller of independent CDs on the Web, the news release says.

Find more details at www. cdbaby.net/instore.